


Bringing a knife to a gun fight

by jauneclair, thenightpainter



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Belligerent Sexual Tension, Fights, First Kiss, M/M, more belligerent than sexual, rival pirate captains Flint and Silver AU, s1 au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 15:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11107653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jauneclair/pseuds/jauneclair, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenightpainter/pseuds/thenightpainter
Summary: Rival pirate captains Flint and Silver collide.





	Bringing a knife to a gun fight

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by an awesome piece of [silverflint fanart](https://kambarbay.tumblr.com/post/161481957857/consider-this-rival-captains-who-would-happily) by the awesome [kambarbay](https://kambarbay.tumblr.com/) :) Thanks Em!

Flint sat in Eleanor Guthrie's bar, drinking, when Long John Silver leaned his crutch up against Flint’s table, and slid into the chair across from him.

It was seventy-two hours before cast-off for the _Urca_ hunt _._ In less than a week, Flint would likely have either realized a ten-years' long vision for Nassau, or be quite irreproachably dead. Flint figured, _what the hell,_ and decided to get drunk. Just a little, he'd reasoned.

Until the curly-haired idiot _fuck_ that had sat down at his table opened his mouth.

"Captain Flint," Silver said, like some pretense of a greeting. "I can't help but overhear that story about the Spaniard Vasquez. An interesting enough story, if it’s true. And yet, I must wonder, captain: is this venture of yours - legitimate?"

Several members at Silver's crew were gathered at a table in the middle of the bar. Flint recognized them over the other captain's shoulder, smirking and laughing and elbowing each other. He ground his teeth, and resolved to keep silent and keep drinking.

Silver went on.

"I wonder about all the short hauls of late." Silver cocked an infuriating eyebrow at Flint, rolling his cigarillo between two fingers. He lowered his voice, as though he was about to share a secret or one of his stories, and Flint fought the automatic urge to lean in (and then inwardly cursed himself for even wanting to). "Perhaps you're hiding the fact that you're too weak to bring in any real treasure."

“Perhaps,” Flint began, focusing on the rum in his cup and decidedly ignoring those smirking blue eyes, “you’re too impatient and short-sighted to ever recognize such a prize if you ever saw it.”

Silver laughed. “Or maybe you’ve just been at this too long and have become confused about what’s a prize and what’s a fairy-tale. I know a real prize when I see one.”

Surely, the infamous Long John Silver could do better than that, Flint thought.

“And how does a man who knows shit about sailing and hasn’t even been captain of a ship for a year expect to fare when he comes up against a ship that doesn’t surrender easily? When you have to lead men in a real fight, hmm?” Flint lifted his eyes and met Silver’s silent stare with a hard one of his own.

The men around them grew quiet. Nassau was a town of notorious tempers. Flint’s own was certainly legendary. But eight months ago, in the street outside this bar, Silver had killed a man who’d hazarded to call him a weakling. Surely the murderous look that Silver levelled Flint with now was a rival to the one last seen by that unfortunate sod, before Silver’s peg leg had stomped in his skull. Flint could tell he’d struck a nerve.   

“Long John Silver,” Flint spat, because he was a _little_ drunk, “so big a name, for so small a man.”

Silver grabbed his tankard from the table and swung it at Flint's head.

Flint ducked, but it caught him on the jaw and he sprawled sideways out of his chair. His head snapped back, his teeth crashing together, as he collapsed against the floor. He stayed there, dazed, for just a moment. Then he was launching himself forward at Silver.

They took out a table as Flint's tackle knocked them both against it, the legs giving out in a cloud of splinters as they crashed to the floor. Flint had already bloodied Silver's nose when the other man smacked him across the head with his crutch; he rolled away for a moment, leaving Silver still on his back, when a pair of hands grabbed Silver beneath the arms and dragged him upright.

Flint looked up, and kept looking up.

"Fucking _let go of me,_ Billy!" Silver struggled in the arms of Flint's former bosun. Without his crutch, which lay on the ground between them, he didn't have much purchase on the one leg - and Billy was holding him at least two inches above the floor as it were. "Your captain is giving you an _order,_ godfuckingdamnit!"

Billy considered this for a moment. Then his grip on Silver tightened. "Order's no good if you're drunk," he said. "And this is a terrible idea, cap'n."

"Let him go, Billy," Flint snarled at Silver's quartermaster, then gripped his jaw at the pain that seemed to reverberate in his bones. "Let him stand on his own _leg_ for once." 

Silver surged forward in Billy's arms, spitting mad. Billy glowered; he looked about ready to do as Flint said, when the door to Eleanor's office banged open and she appeared with O'Malley hot on her heels.

"What the fuck is going _on_ out here?" she shouted, coming to stop between them. Flint pushed himself to his feet, still wiping blood from his jaw. Under Eleanor's narrowed gaze, the rush of the fight left him and he looked around: the bar was dead silent, except for the string of insults that Silver was spewing at Flint and Billy, and they were all watching him and Eleanor and Silver.

Eleanor nodded at Billy. "Take your captain out on the street if he can't behave in here. I don't want to see his piss-poor excuse for a face stirring up fights - you're lucky I don't ask you to pay for it." She was already turning around, calling over her shoulder to him, "Captain Flint, a word in my office, please."

He shuffled his feet in her direction, not thinking he had much of a choice after helping to destroy some of her property.

He paced across Eleanor's office as she shut the doors behind them.

"You're a few days away from achieving all that you've worked for in this place for the last ten years," Eleanor said, crossing the room to sit behind her desk, "and here you are squabbling with other captains in my fucking bar like some kind of animal off of Vane's crew. Is the prospect of success really so foreign to you that you have to destroy it before you’ve begun?"

Flint slunk down in the chair opposite the desk, rubbing at his beard.

“Perhaps. But then there was less than seventy two hours from cast off and I thought, why not live dangerously?”

“It was still a fucking stupid decision.”

He smiled a little at her, and then grimaced, his hand going again to the bloodied bruise on his jaw from where Silver had hit him with the tankard. Drawing his hand away, he stared at the blood smeared on his fingertips, and remembered why he’d begun that argument with Silver in the first place.

"They think we're mad, to put ourselves through all this when the outcome so uncertain," he said. "Are we?"

"The outcome is only uncertain for those who disbelieve." Eleanor's eyes didn't leave his as she reached into one of the desk drawers and produced two small cups, which she filled with some watered-down rum. "Do you?"

"No," he said, and bumped his cup against hers in a silent toast.

They drank in companionable silence for a while, until Eleanor put down her cup and sighed.

"Whatever the hell just happened with Silver -"

"It was a one-off."

"I know. But I don't want to have to clean up the mess from another Singleton. Silver's approach isn't wrong. Loyalty," she said, "you could fucking try to cultivate some."

Flint cocked an eyebrow. "Are you about to give me advice on being well-liked?"

"Fuck off, Flint," Eleanor grumbled, but she poured more rum into his cup anyway.

* * *

Though Eleanor offered to let him stay at the inn, Flint demurred. He wanted to be back on the _Walrus._

He stumbled out onto the street, drawing his black headscarf around his hair. His head was still pounding from the rush of the fight and the pain in his jaw and that bit of drink.

He didn't give half a fuck about most of the other captains on the island: not Vane, even after the shit he'd tried to pull with Singleton; certainly not Hornigold, bemoaning the loss of his glory days up in the fort. But Silver _. Fucking Silver_. There was something about him, the way he smiled, the way he talked - the way he moved that goddamn jabbering mouth - that had settled under Flint's skin and buzzed since the first time that Silver had sidled up to him in Eleanor's bar and sat down across from him in the same way he had tonight - like he owned the bar, Nassau, and everyone in it.

The hairs on the back of Flint's neck stood up. He swung around in time to catch the glint of moonlight off the barrel of the gun that emerged out of the alleyway. At the other end of it was Silver, hopping forward on his crutch.

Silver swayed a little on the crutch, though his grip on the gun was sure. Flint wondered if he'd come back here to drink more, or to wait in ambush for him, but somehow he'd managed to escape Billy and evade Eleanor's men.

"Are you feeling especially brave out here, now that you can't hide behind Eleanor Guthrie's skirts?"

Flint rolled his eyes, turned his back, and started walking towards the beach.

"Don't walk away from me when I'm fucking talking to you!"

"That looks to be exactly what I'm doing," Flint said.

The butt of Silver's gun caught him on the back of his head. Flint stumbled forward, dazed for a moment - and Silver had _gotten one up on him again_ \- before Silver grabbed a fistful of his coat and shoved him into the alley.

Flint loosed his sword from its scabbard an instant before Silver closed the space between them. The business end of his pistol rested in the hollow of Flint's cheek. The cool metal kissed his skin, making him shiver for a moment, until he pressed his sword up against Silver's stomach.

"Do it," Flint spat. Silver looked at him with darkened eyes. This close, Flint could practically taste the tobacco and rum in his mouth. His mouth, which was inches from Flint's, lips parted slightly. The pistol hadn't moved. "Fucking _do it_."

Silver surged forward to kiss him, heedless of the sword between them or the gun he was still aiming at Flint's head. He kissed like he wanted to devour Flint. And Flint - through some fault that was not entirely the rum's - kissed him back.

The taste of Silver was exactly what Flint had predicted: tobacco and rum and the salt of the sea on his lips, on his tongue, inside the dark wildness of his mouth that opened up to admit him. Flint gave as good as he got - and this kiss, it wasn't a particularly violent one, despite its beginnings - drinking Silver in. Trying to search him out. Trying to map the other man's intentions with just his mouth.

Their beards brushed against one another, and that was a feeling so new that Flint reared back once he realized it, _that he was kissing John Silver._

"The sweetest form of conquest, don't you think?" Silver said, practically purring. The tip of his gun gently traced along the line of Flint's cheekbone, before Silver's eyes flickered downwards. Flint could almost feel the heat of Silver from where the edge of his blade was pressed against the other man's belly, through the fabric of his shirt - like a hot shock running up his arm. Then Silver lifted his eyes again, that infamous goddamn smirk lighting up his face. "Is that your sword, captain, or are you just happy to see me?"

Flint shoved him hard. Silver fell backwards, onto his ass in the middle of the alley, curls jostling everywhere. He began to laugh.

"Stay the fuck away from me," Flint said. He stalked off, sheathing his sword as he went.

His heart sank like a stone in his chest as he made his way to the beach, onto a skiff, back to his cabin, locking the door. With each step, the words beat in his head like the tattoo of a stone drum: _What. Had. He. Done._


End file.
